Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sānguó yǎnyì 三國演義) is a historical novella based on the Three Kingdoms era of China and written by Luo Guanzhong. It is more famous than Chen Shou's Records of Three Kingdoms among the casual Three Kingdoms fan. Overview The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is based upon the turbulant years near the end of the Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period; starting with the Yellow Turban Rebellion and ending with the unification of China by Jin. It mostly covers the lives of the men who rose to prominence during the waning years of Han, such as Cao Cao or Sun Quan, but spends only few pages covering the events that led to the fall of the Three Kingdoms, thus prominent people during the final years of the Three Kingdoms, such as Sima Zhao or Du Yu appear only in few pages. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, as a whole, is traditionally attributed to its author Luo Guanzhong, but it should be noted that Luo Guanzhong has taken inspiration of many other (fictitious) works and that Romance of the Three Kingdoms could arguably be seen as a compilation. The word 'compilation' is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, because Luo Guanzhong has added many characters and events himself, but the base of the novel lies within other works. One of the sources that Luo Guanzhong took inspiration from was, of course, the Records of the Three Kingdoms. The historical work written by Chen Shou for the Jin dynasty. Qing dynasty historian Zhang Xuecheng 章学诚 once wrote that Romance was 70% historically correct and 30% of it was fictional, but this statement seems to generous and is often considered incorrect. Those 30% were taken from various fictional accounts such as Sanguo zhi pinghua ("A storytelling of the Records of the Three Kingdoms"), from which the Peach Garden Oath was taken, various folklores and opera's (where Diaochan's story comes from), and, of course Luo Guanzhong's own mind. With Romance Luo Guanzhong has become the most succesful author of fictional Three Kingdoms. To this day his work still serves as main inspiration for TV series, movies and videogames. Read Romance of the Three Kingdoms online Romance of the Three Kingdoms has been translated several times. The most popular English translations are done arguably by Moss Roberts in 1994 and Charles Henry Brewitt-Taylor in 1925 (both reprinted several times). In 2014 a new translation by Yu Sumei was released in three volumes. Below you can read the Brewitt-Taylor translation. Please note that the original Brewitt-Taylor translation deliberately wrote names of lesser characters wrong if they were the same as that of a more prominent character. For example there was a Yellow Turban leader named Zhang Bao and the son of Zhang Fei was also named Zhang Bao, thus Brewitt-Taylor changed the name of the Yellow Turban to Zhang Ba to avoid confusion. For this online version these namechanges have been undone, so the Yellow Turban is called Zhang Bao and other characters also carry their real name. See also *List of fictional people of the Three Kingdoms *[[List of fictional stories in Romance of the Three Kingdoms|List of fictional stories in Romance of the Three Kingdoms]] *''Records of the Three Kingdoms'' - the official history *''Sanguo zhi pinghua'' - early forerunner of Romance of the Three Kingdoms *''Sanfen shilüe'' - early edition of Sanguo zhi pinghua Notes References Sources *Luo Guanzhong. Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Trans. Charles Henry Brewitt-Taylor. New York: Tuttle Publishing, 2002. *Luo Guanzhong. Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Trans. Moss Roberts. California: University of California Press, 2004. Category:Modern Sources